Brandon Ford rejoins Dave Pribulka and Eden Ratliff and wastes no time stepping back into the role of host. He deftly guides the conversation from how have expectations changed for managers to something much deeper that touches on what it means to be apolitical in this new reality and how compartmentalization may or may not serve the profession going forward.

Check our MuniSquare for more content like this and be sure to subscribe!

00:00 Sports and Local Engagement

03:56 International City Management Association Insights

09:30 Expectations of Local Government

18:44 The Role of Technology in Local Governance

23:13 Navigating Civic Engagement and Emotional Appeals

25:13 The Complexity of Local Governance

28:35 Engaging the Next Generation of Managers

30:26 The Balance of Politics and Management

32:34 Compartmentalizing Personal Beliefs in Governance

36:34 The Future of Political Neutrality in Local Government

40:18 Maintaining Professional Standards Amidst Political Pressures

Who gets to decide the value of a place? In other words, who gets to decide the metric?

I brought that question to Christa Breum Amhøj, a Danish practitioner, researcher, and what I can only describe as a social architect because she reads a place the way a building architect reads a site. And to John Diamond, who sits in Manchester and has been watching the same tensions play out in the UK across decades of academic research, consultation, and engagement with emerging local government challenges. What follows is my attempt to trace the arc of what the three of us discovered together.

Be sure to check out the full video on MuniSquare or our YouTube Channel and subscribe to get more content like this!

• 01:39 — Opening: Who Creates Value in a Community?
• 02:23 — Competing Definitions of Public Value
• 03:38 — Rethinking Value: The Aging Society Example
• 06:22 — Tourism, Resistance, and Local Control (Scotland Case)
• 08:51 — Visible vs. Invisible Value
• 11:11 — Micro-Experiments vs. Traditional Innovation
• 14:53 — Professional Expertise vs. Local Knowledge
• 19:43 — A Place Has Agency
• 21:00 — Learning to Observe and Map a Place
• 23:27 — From Problem-Solving to System-Based Thinking
• 24:42 — Case Study: Faxe Municipality (Denmark)
• 27:00 — Redesigning the Festival Through Community Input
• 28:30 — Outcomes: Relationships, Access, and New Pathways
• 32:49 — Why Process Matters More Than Outputs
• 34:00 — Access and Infrastructure: The Transport Example
• 37:45 — The COMPASS Model Overview
• 42:30 — Managing Tension and Conflict in Co-Creation
• 44:00 — Expanding the Definition of Prosperity
• 46:30 — The Role of the Facilitator in Place-Based Work
• 53:34 — Closing Reflections: Practice Over Theory

Economic development isn’t just about buildings and business, sidewalks and parking, blighted malls and dying downtowns, housing shortages and shrinking workforces, casino controversies and data center ordinances. It’s actually about facilitating conversations with the people invested in the outcomes.

Keri (Miller) Kenepp, Director of Community and Economic Development for College Township, Pennsylvania, and Erin (Genest) Trone, Project Manager for BusinessPA at the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development, walk us through a maze of issues facing local governments today and grant us invaluable insights into how we can think about a future together.

This episode is made possible by a partnership with APMM, the Association for Pennsylvania Municipal Management.

Be sure to subscribe to MuniSquare to get full content that includes all episodes of PCC Local Time and much, much more.

00:00 – Who Shapes the Future of a Place? (Episode Setup)

02:00 – Keri’s Non-Traditional Path into Economic Development

05:00 – The Expansive Nature of Local Government Roles

07:00 – “Creating the Conditions” for Development

08:30 – The Long Game vs. Election Cycles

10:30 – What Elected Officials Want (and Need to Say in Public)

12:30 – Casinos: Public Resistance vs. Legal Reality

15:00 – Data Centers: Misunderstanding and Zoning Constraints

17:00 – “We Have to Allow for All Uses” (Policy Reality)

20:00 – The Power of Community Resistance (Nestlé Case)

22:00 – The Blighted Mall and Risk-Taking in Development

23:00 – Understanding the Private Sector (Erin’s State Role)

25:00 – Matchmaking: Communities and Companies

29:00 – The Facilitator Role Defined

31:00 – Advising Elected Officials (Pros, Cons, and Decisions)

33:00 – Tension: Standards vs. Development (Affordable Housing)

36:00 – Sidewalks as a Case Study in Equity and Safety

38:00 – Developer Perspective: Why Projects Don’t Pencil Out

40:00 – Blighted Properties and “Highest and Best Use”

43:00 – Redeveloping the Mall (Zoning Shifts and Density)

45:30 – Parking: Outdated Assumptions and New Thinking

49:00 – Changing Mindsets About Walkability

50:30 – What Keri Had to Unlearn About Economic Development

53:00 – Erin on Labor Shortages, AI, and Shifting Metrics